It’s going to be a long night, but the returns thus far indicate that Team Pulido has prevailed in Santa Ana. The worst performance by a member of Team Pulido is that of Councilman Carlos Bustamante, my opponent. He got less votes than the rest of them. The best performance was turned in by Claudia Alvarez, who faced an opponent who did not have a ballot designation or statement.
The numbers will continue to shift tonight as the rest of the votes are counted. However, it appears that our friend Jim Walker is falling short of victory in Ward 1, against Councilman Vince Sarmiento. Shame on those who did not help their friend Walker. LIke Evangeline Gawronski, two years ago, Walker looks like he could have won if he had been supported by the neighborhood activists he has helped so often.
In my ward, Bustamante has a comfortable lead at the moment, although he is getting less than 50% of the vote. That could change I suppose, but I have quite a hurdle to overcome as there are so many challengers in this race. Ana Rebecca Valencia Verdin did the job that Bustamante asked her to do. She split the vote – so her guy Bustamante could prevail. And in a surprise, deranged former Orange School Board Member Steve Rocco did quite well – based on his name. Many voters apparently voted for him as he is not Latino.
In the Mayor’s race, Pulido is leading. But he is not doing as well as Alvarez. She has 6,000 more votes than he does – and George Collins has almost 5,000 so far. You do the math. Collins split the vote in Michele Martinez’ favor. But not enough. She will get more votes tonight, but probably not enough to win. She ran a great campaign, as did George, but Pulido will likely survive to ruin our city for two more years.
There are as of right now only 26 precincts left to count. It seems impossible to win at this point.
Over in the SAUSD School Board races, it looks like the voters were fooled again as they are going with Rob Richardson and Jose Hernandez, the horrible incumbents. But at least one of the candidates I endorsed, Valerie Amezcua, is holding her own in third place.
Gregory Barraza did the job that Miguel Pulido tasked him with. He diluted the Latino vote and pushed down some far better candidates.
Roman Reyna ran a good campaign and he could still win, but right now he is behind Amezcua. And poor Mike Gonzalez got wiped out!
UPDATE:
Congratulations to Valerie Amezcua on her victory in her SAUSD School Board race! I am sorry to see the incumbents win, but at least we got Valerie on the board too.
It looks like Bustamante stayed under 50%, but he did prevail. In fact all of Team Pulido did. That bodes ill for our city. But the people had choices this year and while the challengers were underfunded, Team Pulido had to spend a fortune, and Jim Walker got a lot of votes in his race against Vince Sarmiento.
It is hard to believe that over 5,000 people voted for the deranged Steve Rocco. On the one hand he is now retired from politics, so I guess their is a silver lining. But that just tells you that quite a few people were not going to vote for a Latino, period.
And I have to assume that many Latino voters, once again, did not vote. The numbers certainly bear that out. So once more we are stuck with the worst City Council in Orange County. I look forward to revealing just how awful they are here at the Orange Juice.
Thanks again to all those who fought the good fight with us.
after the 1am update, the votes counted do not include any votes from the precincts. Only by mail and early voting ballots.
It must be all the paper ballots slowing the count way down.
If you know your precinct, check out the mapping system to see which votes have been counted. If election day votes show -0-, the those votes at the polls have not yet been counted.
http://electionmapping.ocgov.com/OCElectionMapper/Map.aspx
Ok now the election day votes are showing . I’ve checked the tapes against the recorded votes and they match. I am happy. (that the numbers from the precinct match the numbers reported now from the ROV)
It will take some time to count the massive amount of paper ballots.
2000 111 precincts in Santa Ana total for orange county 2039
2004 does not list how many precincts in Santa Ana but there was 2146 in OC
2008 127 precincts in Santa Ana and total of 2109 in OC
Some thing doesn’t seem right to me how does Orange County from 2004 lose 37 precincts? I can see gaining precincts but losing precincts doesn’t make sense to me.
You assume a lot, Art.
Your assertion that Rocco got so many votes, indicating those people won’t vote for a Latino, is ridiculous and not supported by the facts. According to the numbers, they voted for Latinos in every other race in the city.
Get over yourself. Acccept the fact that reasonable people of Santa Ana made a conscious decision not to vote for Art Pedroza. In fact, Steve Rocco was leading for most of the evening, which means that the early voting was favoring him.
Art, You should be as gracious in defeat as McCain is, but that’s just not who you are. That is the main reason that you lost. Your persona, your writing and your rants stink of condescending negativity and cynicism. Hopefully you are not too stubborn to learn and humble yourself, but I doubt it.
We do have a lot of work ahead of us. The Pulido team must recognize that many of us are unhappy with the way they run the show and we will be watching. Their accountability is higher than ever and we will be at the council meetings and the board meetings and assert our citizenship on our leaders to change Santa Ana for the better. This is only the beginning… People, get involved with your local PTA’s and NPO’s. Let’s work iit out…
Art,
You should be ashamed of yourself for attacking Greg Barraza. Greg is far more qualified than most on the ballot and is one of the few candidates that actually works in the education system AS AN EDUCATOR.
Nice try in attempting to make your lame run look even close; Bustamante kicked your ass. None of your losing team was even in the race. GIVE IT A REST!
Art, it looked to me that you were being gracious. What the heck do they want? Pregunta, bese sus asnos? They will have to wait a loooong time for that I’ll bet.
#6,
It is hard to be overly gracious to Team Pulido when they lied their pants off to the voters. I can understand McCain being gracious to Obama – we are talking about a good man who won after running a great campaign.
I am starting a new business and will be busy with that going forward, but will continue to keep this blog going. We will be needed now more than ever!
Thanks for your support.
#5. No one attacked Barraza. He and his wife showed their lack of character, ethics and plain stupidity. They only embarrassed themselves by behaving in such a low rent fashion. I have to admit however, they have been quite the talk at City Hall. His poor wife as previously said has been infected by his barrio behavior. His parents should have taught him better morals.
You claim the candidates \lied their pants off\ to get elected. How about backing up those false claims. You seem to have a false sense of yourself claiming that you will be needed more than ever. Who really needs you, all you do is criticize and don’t come up with any solutions of your own. Your great at throwing stones but that seems to be about it, keep to blogging, politics is the art of compromise not insults!
In the Santa Ana races it appeared that there was absolutely no correlation between who got elected and the number or sizes of campaign posters. I would bet good money there is a similar non-correlation between the number of campaign mailers sent out and electoral success. I suspect that most voters these things completely in terms of making their choices, and if not knowing the challengers, will mark the incumbents, preferring “the devils we know” versus those “those we don’t”.
It takes a committed long-term effort to successfully oust a political establishment, and Art, Jim and a number of other good-guys and gals started a bit late to succeed in this one. But you’ve a good start and now years to get well known in this large city.
Art, don’t dismiss the comments of 3,4,5,and 8 above; they are very telling of how people think. No matter how outrageous the behavior of elected officials — expressions of harsh outrage tend to put off people. I’m from Louisiana where we elected and re-elected and re-elected one of this country’s most corrupt governors, Edwin Edwards. But Edwards was always gentile and courtly, and his challengers always shrill and venemous. We all knew Edwards was a crook, but we were convinced he wouldn’t steal from Louisiana, but just shake down outsiders like riverboat casino operators. Art, I’ve met and talked to you and you’re a much, much sweeter guy than comes across in your blog postings. So, you were voted scariest blogger? If they ran a teddy bear poll open to people who personally know the candidates, I’m sure you would take first place in ‘most huggable’. Please, please, along with your fellow OJ bloggers (left to right, Vern to Terry), keep the light of day on the dark machinations of the rascals currently in office. As citizens get to know and trust better people, they’ll be out. And let us readers supply the appropriate adjectives and discriptors to their character and behavior.